Austin DA's Office: A Cauldron of Malicious Prosecution #IStandWithRickPerry

Austin, unlike the rest of Texas, is a college town and a cesspool of far left ideology and activism.  The Office of the District Attorney there  (in Travis County) investigates and prosecutes crimes related to the operation of the Texas state government.  Apparently, one of the crimes the office prosecutes is being a Republican.

Governor Rick Perry of Texas is the latest victim of the hyper-partisan DA's office in Austin, being indicted by an Austin Grand Jury for abuse of power in vetoing an appropriations bill that would continue funding that very same DA Office.  Perry had warned that he would veto the bill unless the current DA there, one Rosemany Lehmberg, resigned.  Lehmberg had been convicted of drunk driving in April 2013, and Perry thought she had disgraced her office and should be replaced; however, Lehmberg refused to resign.

Hence, payback time:  the Democrats cooked up an indictment of Perry that is so transparent that even prominent liberals and Democrats are expressing dismay.  Perry was indicted for "abuse of office" and "attempting to coerce a public official."  Patterico describes the applicable state laws and why they do not apply to the Perry situation, here.

This latest abuse of the legal system by the Austin DA is nothing new.  The Austin DA Office, under former DA Ronnie Earle, falsely indicted prominent Republicans in the past, on trumped up charges.  A couple of examples are below.

Earle filed charges against Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, then Texas State Treasurer, for allegedly misusing state telephones and allegedly assaulting a staffer. Earle attempted to drop the charges on the first day in court — in fact, at the pre-trial hearing — after the judge in the case questioned the admissibility of his evidence. The judge refused to allow it, instructing the jury to return a "not guilty" verdict so the charge could not be brought against her again.

Tom Delay was prosecuted for "money laundering," for collecting corporate political donations that he turned over to the Republican National Committee, who in turn used the funds to support Texas Republicans.  Here is what I wrote about the prosecution of Tom Delay:

Tom Delay was undoubtedly the pinnacle of this cretin[Ronnie Earle]'s shameful career, in that he was able to obtain an indictment of Tom Delay, after shopping eight different Grand Juries, and then tried Delay in the leftist enclave of Austin, Texas, where Delay was wrongly convicted of "money laundering," for obtaining contributions for Texas Republican candidates. Delay was forced to resign from Congress, and was sentenced to three years in jail for the alleged crime. His attorneys immediately appealed the 2010 conviction, and the case slowly wound through the appeals process.

On September 19, 2013, Delay's nightmare was ended when the Texas Appeals Court reversed the conviction, stating that there was no evidence to convict, and that the indictment should never have been brought in the first place. Delay was therefore formerly acquitted of the charges.  Ronnie Earle's dishonorable and disgraceful abuse of the justice system had its intended effect: Delay's political career was ended, his reputation unfairly tainted by the false charges, and he was forced to spend great sums of money to avoid jail time from the absurd conviction.

Ronnie Earle is the personification of the...Democrat Party, where any behavior is judged merely by its success in defeating Republicans, no matter how ruthless, dishonest, dishonorable or corrupt the tactics. Destroying careers and lives of political opponents is par for the course, as is stealing elections through voter fraud and other schemes.

It is time for Texans to shut down the Austin DA Office as the prosecuting arm of corruption in Texas, and move that function elsewhere, to a saner location.  The hyper-partisan City of Austin is incapable of fairly and evenly applying the law to Republicans.